How did Mary and Joseph feel the day after Christmas? Was there still a hint of angel dust in the air? Some visible reminder that they had stood on holy ground? A sign that the baby in the manger was indeed Emmanuel, God with Us?
Or was Christmas plus one a reality check for them? Did the angel dust smell more like donkey dung? Did the Christ-child seem like just another baby . . . to be fed, changed, protected?
“Nothing gold can stay,” wrote Robert Frost. Was he right? I certainly feel his anguish. I know what it’s like to wake up the day after. To see only ordinariness where once had been extraordinariness. To wonder if the miraculous had been only in my mind.
That’s where faith comes in, huh? The Gospel of Luke says the mother of Jesus continued to “ponder these things in her heart.” I take it that Mary saw more than the obvious that day. And the day after that day. And the day after – you get the idea. Because she never stopped looking back to what had been. Never stopped looking forward to what should be, what could be, what would be.